United Airlines Ventures invests in aerospace startup Astro Mechanica

United Airlines Ventures (UAV), the venture capital arm of United Airlines, today announced an investment in aerospace startup Astro Mechanica. Astro Mechanica's adaptive propulsion concept and advanced airframe design has the potential to unlock supersonic aircraft with near-term applications for national defense, orbital launch, and long-range cargo delivery.

UAV was established in 2021 to invest in early-stage start-up companies focused on innovative technologies with the potential to shape the future of aviation and travel.

"Astro Mechanica is developing an adaptive engine concept for strategic military and commercial applications, addressing the challenging yet worthwhile pursuit of supersonic flight," said Mukul Hariharan, Managing Partner at United Airlines Ventures. "UAV is excited to join Astro Mechanica's renowned investment partners to support its exceptional management team as they advance their engine technology and progress towards their first aircraft prototype."

Astro Mechanica's engine, Duality, is being designed to utilize a hybrid electric architecture to optimize performance across a wide range of flight speeds and profiles, which would create an engine that would be efficient from takeoff to Mach 3+. With these changes, Astro Mechanica is developing the world's first supersonic aircraft that has transpacific capability.

"We are excited to form this relationship with United Airlines Ventures (UAV)," said Ian Brooke, CEO and founder of Astro Mechanica. "This investment reflects strong conviction in Astro Mechanica from an experienced and credible industry leader, and we appreciated UAV's deep technical grasp of our novel high-speed propulsion technologies. We look forward to working with them as an advisor and a collaborator as we move into flight testing for the next era of passenger travel."

Duality is designed to separate the propulsion units from the turboshaft engine by using electric motors. This allows it to behave like a turbofan at slower speeds, a turbojet at faster speeds just below supersonic, and switch to a ramjet at very high supersonic speeds.